Claire Carroll

---

There or Not There
.

Ok, fine. Fine. I’ll tell you a true story. But this is the only one I’ve got. It’s a horrible story though.

I was twenty-two, and I worked for a hybrid ethical advertising practice in Central London. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I had no idea. The practice was commissioned, usually by the local authority or private companies, to deliver striking messages in public spaces. The practice was in a studio, located in a former warehouse, which had been damaged by a flood that summer (no, don’t worry, that was before I started. That wasn’t the thing I did). I was employed as a studio assistant to sort out all of the archived drawings and paperwork that had been damaged by the floodwater.

I was quite happy to re-file the crispy, dried-out papers. The work was better paid than the pub, plus I didn’t have to work at night, or walk home with my phone and keys clenched in my hand, damp down my front from the drip trays, ears ringing. Working in the day was something normal adults did. So, if I did this type of proper work then I’d be a proper adult. London was full of this type of stratification. Or maybe I was. I can see that now, OK? I can see that I was the one with the problem.

Perhaps because I seemed excessively happy to have been given this role, or perhaps because the directors had told them they should make use of me, the architects and architectural assistants started to ask me to help them on their projects.

Some people say that the structure of our practice veers towards anarcho-communism, one of the senior creatives said to me during my first week. I didn’t understand what anarcho-communism was, but then I realised that he probably didn’t expect me to. He went on to describe how the work they did was concept-driven, creatively led, no hierarchies within the staff, a horizontal network of collaborators, no company shareholders, no dividends.

It’s about producing the best, most functional, most aesthetic and most meaningful design for the client, and for the public, he said. Nothing else matters.

I said something like, oh, wow. Cool.

Then he said: It also means you don’t have a boss, not really. Like, you’re in charge of your own destiny here. No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.

Years later, while working a temp job at another hybrid ethical advertising practice, whose directors all wore suits to work and underpaid their junior staff, I would remember that moment, and how I took it for granted.

Don’t worry. It’s not all like this. I’ll get to the bad thing, I promise. It’s coming.

I had been there three months when one of the junior creatives, Gael, asked me to help him on a project he was working on. Gael was five years older than me, serious, elegant and razor sharp. We ate lunch together in the park by the office. I guess you could say we became friends. The project was for a site that was in a patch of woodland on the far eastern edge of the city. Gael and I would take the tube east to visit the site, travelling to the end of the line, to where London wasn’t really London at all anymore, but somewhere else; the countryside. Those parts of London-not-London are like a different world, somewhere that’s between places; not really anywhere at all. I always wondered how people could just live there, going about their daily lives as if there was nothing weird about that.

Gael had designed a series of installations which would be placed throughout the woodland. These installations would replicate old- fashioned interior décor; bring things outside that should really have been inside. They would be fused with the natural surroundings, mostly in tree stumps or rocks or dead trees, and would form a trail through the woods that local residents could discover. There were codes to scan that gave you information about the client, but you could simply enjoy the trail without these. It would be charming and delightful and uncanny and interesting. At the centre of the trail was an ornate ladder that Gael had designed the year before. It looked like the type of ladder you’d find in an old-fashioned library – you know, the kind with casters that slides along the bookshelves – although it was cast in wrought iron and went straight up into a tree. The ladder was there to invite passers-by to climb up into the tree; showing them a way up into the upper branches that would have been otherwise inaccessible from the ground. The branches at the top of the tree looked too flimsy, so he didn’t think anyone had tried yet.

But in any case, Gael had said to me, on that first visit to the site, I think it’s quite interesting to have a ladder that doesn’t lead anywhere.

I agreed with him, but then, I always agreed with him.

We were to install ornate bathroom taps into a piece of rock that sat near a stream, brass doorknobs into the side of trees to make it look like they might open up. We had a ceramic basin, square like a Belfast sink, that we would set into a tree stump.

Do you think people will like it? I asked Gael as we took the Tube back from a site visit one afternoon. The trail; the installations I mean.

Yeah, he said looking up from the email he was typing rapidly on his phone. Well, they should anyway. It’s a really cool project. He smiled at me, reassuringly, and went back to his phone. I looked out of the windows as the land edged past. The Tube trains roamed over ground out there, before burrowing under the city again. I wondered how he could be so sure that people would like what we were doing in that scrap of woodland. I wondered how we could be sure of anything.

The designs were nearing completion, but there was still something missing. The weeks rolled on in the studio, and Gael made sketches and mood boards whilst I hovered and filed things away, brought coffee for meetings with clients, played with the creatives’ children on school inset days. A week before the installation date, I arrived at work to find Gael in the office, the first one there. On his desk was a cardboard cube; a box. About the size that might contain a mug from a gift shop.

Look, he said. Delia has said we can have this. For the nature trail, I mean.

Delia was one of the founders of the practice. We hardly ever saw her as she was usually giving talks at conferences, or lecturing. When we did see her, it was fleeting. Chunky glasses and red lipstick and vetiver and then gone.

I went over to the desk. Gael opened the box. Inside, on a blur of cotton wool, was a human eyeball. It gazed up at the ceiling, glistening. It was completely real in every way. Except it was four times the size it should be.

Gael put in his hand and slowly, carefully, pulled the eye out of the box, and held it out in his palm. Even close up, the thing looked too real, too wet. The iris was flecked with brown and blue, each tiny sliver of colour looked organic, like it had arrived there of its own accord. I wanted him to turn it over, so that I could see the back of it. The illusion was too much; too terrifying. He kept holding it there though, the eye covering the whole of his upturned hand.

There’s this guy that makes them, from a workshop somewhere on Caledonian Road, he said. Not this size obviously, but they’re proper medical ones, for if you’ve actually lost an eye.

I stared at it, searching its depths for something. I wouldn’t touch it.

Delia commissioned it for another project, Gael went on, but they didn’t use it in the end so she said we could have it.

I wasn’t so sure that it went with the other things we were planning, but Gael was excited at the prospect of intervening in the landscape in a new and original way.

We can fit it into a hole in one of the trees, he said. It’ll look so uncanny and weird.

The type of hole he was talking about occurs when a branch dies or falls away, leaving a circular wound on the trunk, like a welt. Gael reckoned we would be able to find one that was just the right size for the eye, so on installation day we brought the eye with us, nestled in the box and tucked safely in my bag.

Installation day was important because we had to make sure that the right fixative agents were used to glue the taps and the door knockers and the basin into their positions. It was important that the contractor who brought the resins didn’t use any that were toxic or harmful to wildlife, it was important that we were there to make sure everything went smoothly. I was important on installation day. I told the men with the resin and the grouting and the power tools what to do and they listened. I had to do all of this because Gael had gone off to find the tree with the right-sized hole for the eye. When I had set all the men to work, I went through the trees to find him.

It was the first hot day of that year. We were away from the traffic noise, away from the clicking-clacking of the tube, the hot stale air of the city, the constant scurrying, the forward momentum. I could walk in a loop there, take my time. The floor under my feet was soft; the earth was deep. I could feel it through the soles of my shoes.

I know, I’m sorry, this probably isn’t necessary, it’s just that it was a long time ago, so there’s this nostalgia here suddenly.

When I found Gael, he was looking up at a tree. His face upturned to the canopy, the leaves scattering shadows across his face. It was an oak tree with thickly ridged bark. I could see that he was looking at the perfect hole, four metres up on the trunk. He had a ladder, borrowed from the contractors, leaning against the tree. He had a plastic bucket full of resin.

I think this one is good. He said it like a question and a statement at once. He was always in charge. But I’m too short to get close enough. Do you reckon you can do it?

I hate ladders, I hate heights. (You know this, I’ve told you about it before).

I opened and closed my mouth.

We should do it now, he said. The resin sets quickly.

He held the ladder, and I went up. I hoped that halfway would be enough, but as it turned out, I had to stand on the rung that was third from the top to get anywhere near the hole. Gael held the ladder at the sides.

Now, at this point maybe I should explain that the hole in the tree didn’t indicate that the trunk was hollow. In fact, up close I could see that the hole was only in the top layer of bark, and that between this layer there was a void – a thin gap – and then the smooth inner trunk inside. I thought: I can just smush the resin in there, and the excess will trickle down inside the tree. It’s non-toxic to wildlife and the tree is big and strong, so it’ll be fine.

I’m going to pass the eye up to you now, said Gael.

Very, very carefully, so slowly, so very slowly, Gael handed me the eye. The leaves and the sunlight reflected on its surface. The light sparkled in its layers. Just acrylic though, remember, man-made. Not a real eye. But made so carefully, with such precision, to look just like one.

What even is design anyway? Functionality and beauty together. Does it need to function as an eye to fulfil its purpose? I don’t know, I’m not a designer.

I held it up to the hole to see if it would fit. It did. So snugly. As if the hole were its own, natural socket. I left it there, balancing and reached down again with my hand out. Gael put the handle of the resin bucket into my hand and I hugged it to me in the crook of my arm.

Here, you’ll need to use your hands to get it in, take this, and he reached up and tucked a surgical glove into the crook in my arm too. I managed to wriggle my free hand into it. The smell of it made no sense out there in the woodland. The ladder wobbled slightly; I tensed my leg muscles. It steadied. The woodland was quiet, apart from the distant noise of the power tools and the chirruping high above us.

And something closer to my ear, fluttering or scurrying, and then quiet.

I took the eye out of the hole, and a panic of something, terrified and frantic, tore past my face. Something dark with a sharp beak, too fast for me to see. The ladder shifted, wobbled, steadied.

Fuck! Fuck! What was that? Fuck. I felt like I could taste bird. The smell of feathers, like when you go under a railway bridge and they are all there, watching. There was still something rustling inside the tree.

Are you OK? Gael’s face was upturned, his glasses covered in the reflection of the woodland. I couldn’t see his eyes.

I think – there’s something living in there. Something just flew out past me.

Well it’s gone now, so maybe just put the resin in?

Oh god, Gael. I really don’t know if I should. What if – I don’t think the thing that flew out will be able to get back in. Also, I think I can hear
something else in there.

Well, he said. It was a complete sentence, but I could tell what he was thinking. I needed to be professional.

It’s just that I know we were supposed to make sure we didn’t cause any damage to wildlife; it was important that we made sure of that so –

I guess you could come down, said Gael. We could look for another tree.

Really?

I mean, if you’d feel better about that, then yes.

His voice was flat and neutral. Looking back now, I should have asked him what he wanted me to do; what he would do if I wasn’t there.

Oh yeah, OK. But – I’m up here now so –

I stood with the bucket of resin balanced in the crook of my arm. My arm started to hurt. Soon my muscles would start to cramp.

What do you want to do? Gael asked. It’s up to you.

I don’t know.

I knew that I didn’t want to go up another tree. I knew that being up the ladder was giving me muscle cramp and vertigo. I looked down, and imagined bones broken; twig-like. The shame; the long recovery. If I looked up into the overstory I felt that some new type of vertigo would take over; that I wouldn’t be able to stop looking up, that my neck would bend further and further back, eventually toppling me down to the same fate. Up or down, things would still end for me. So, there was just ahead, and the hole. I put my hand in. The void was so narrow. Nothing was living in there, surely. Nothing could live there. I wanted to get down from the ladder and go and have lunch and find a tree to have a wee behind, and then sign off on the project and get back into the city. It was getting late. I pressed my ear to the tree, the noise from inside was almost imperceptible, little rustles, little squeaks. Probably just my ears playing tricks on me. Probably not a nest with baby birds in it. Probably not a nest full of live creatures, pink and helpless, perfectly formed, delicately taking their place in the ecosystem. Almost certainly not.

Look I think we need to hurry up, said Gael. The resin will be setting.

If you do a parachute jump you have to force your body and your mind apart for the moment that you jump. Your mind doesn’t want to jump, and that’s good, that’s evolution keeping you safe. Why would anyone want to jump out of a plane anyway? But sometimes you have to press the override button, which is what I did when I scooped up a handful of resin, already congealing in the heat of the day, and shoved it into the hole in the tree. The eye went next and I held it there for sixty seconds while it bonded with the resin. It looked alive and strange, just like we’d wanted it to. I let go carefully and it stayed put. Set into the tree, gazing down on us. I thought about listening again for the noise, just to check, but I decided against it.

Wow, that looks so cool, said Gael as I climbed down. Amazing job. He patted me awkwardly on the arm. We didn’t talk again about the bird that had flown out, or the nest of chicks that I couldn’t be sure weren’t still inside the tree.

We walked back along the path. The men had finished installing the other pieces and were sitting down for lunch. We sat down with them. We opened our boxes of salad and sushi that were perspiring in the sun. A robin hopped over, edging closer and closer to us. I looked down at my lunch. The pink of a prawn splayed open across a lozenge of sticky rice. The pink was turning grey in the heat. I thought about a baby bird with frail skin and tiny, bulging black spheres for eyes.

Gael said, I read something about robins, about how they have evolved to learn that there’s always food nearby when they see humans, so they come right up to us when they see us.

To test the theory, one of the men brushed some crumbs off his overalls onto the floor for the robin, but the sweeping motion of his wide flat hand was too much; it startled the robin who took off again, suddenly invisible against the colours of the woodland.

On the way back, I thought about the tree looking down at us. The eye, so alive, but dead at the same time, had seen everything we had done. I thought about those baby birds, suffocating in the dark, or maybe not. There or not there. Probably not.

I went on a date with someone once, who asked me about the worst thing I had ever done, and I told him that story. After I had finished, I asked him what the worst thing was that he had ever done. He told me about how he grew up in a seaside town. He said that when he was eighteen, he was coming home from a party, high on LSD, and punched a stranger in the face and pushed them over the seawall. He said he couldn’t be sure whether he had actually done it, or whether it was a hallucination. He said he could remember that it was high tide, and there was thick grey water swirling below. He said that he hated going back to visit his hometown. He said he didn’t like being near the sea at all. He said if he had done it, then that person would have almost certainly drowned, and he’d be a murderer. He said sometimes he was kept awake at night with worry that some human remains would wash up on the shore somewhere, and then the police would knock on his door and arrest him, and he’d go to prison for the rest of his life.

There was an awkward silence. Eventually, I said, It’s OK, you probably didn’t do it.

He agreed, although we didn’t see each other again.
.
.
.
Claire Carroll lives in Somerset, UK, and writes experimental fiction about the intersection of nature, technology and desire. She is a PhD researcher at Bath Spa and Exeter Universities, where she explores how experimental short fiction writing can reimagine how humans relate to the natural and non-human world. Her short stories and poetry have been published by journals including The London Magazine, Gutter, 3:AM, Lunate, perverse, The Oxonian Review and Short Fiction Journal. In 2021, her short story ‘My Brain is Boiling with Ideas’ was shortlisted for The White Review’s Short Story Prize, and her short story ‘Cephalopod’ was the recipient of the Essex University & Short Fiction Journal Wild Writing Prize. Both pieces are taken from The Unreliable Nature Writer (published on the 6th June by Scratch Books), a collection of linked short stories that examines the interconnection of climate anxiety, surviving late capitalism and dealing with personal loss.